March 4, 2013 – AUSTIN, Texas – Citing a clear and urgent market demand for cost savings for states and districts and high-quality, data-driven solutions to empower educators and yield better student outcomes, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation today announced the formation of a subsidiary non-profit LLC, the Ed-Fi Alliance. An innovative education technology partner for educators, administrators and entrepreneurs, and committed to distributing a superior, standards-based, educator-facing free data solution, the Ed-Fi Alliance is based in Austin, Texas. The alliance operates under the leadership of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation’s former US director of policy, Lori Fey.

“Since the launch of the Ed-Fi initiative in July 2011, we have seen increasing demand from states and school districts because they see real time and cost savings advantages created by deploying the Ed-Fi solution within existing IT environments,” said Janet Mountain, executive director of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. “Currently, 36 percent of K-12 students and 39 percent of teachers are poised to benefit from Ed-Fi-enabled solutions, which are free under license. We expect the Ed-Fi solution to help even greater numbers of students in the next two years. The resources and focus required to support this exponential growth merited a stand-alone organization to ensure that these high-quality solutions can quickly get into the hands of teachers and administrators.”

A New Standard in Data-Driven Education

The Ed-Fi solution addresses a persistent problem for teachers and administrators: accessing valuable data locked away in different data systems and tools that do not interoperate. The Ed-Fi solution accelerates student achievement by extracting student information from a variety of sources, and integrating the data into Web-based dashboards, reports and other applications that are, with the right permissions, accessible to educators and other parties on demand. This free educational data standard and tool suite, developed with input from teachers, school leaders, local and state education agency officials, and vendors nationwide, is composed of:

a unifying data model

a data exchange and application framework

sample dashboard source code

Launched in July 2011 to improve K-12 student achievement, the Ed-Fi solution also enables school and district administrators, and state and federal agencies to supplement or replace tools used for broader state or federal accountability reporting purposes.

Ten states (Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas) currently license the Ed-Fi solution directly and four additional states benefit from partnerships with inBloom (formerly the Gates Foundation’s Shared Learning Collaborative) and the Carnegie Foundation.

About the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (www.msdf.org) is dedicated to improving the lives of children living in urban poverty around the world. With offices in Austin, TX and New Delhi, India, and Cape Town, South Africa, the Dell family foundation funds programs that foster high-quality public education and childhood health, and improve the economic stability of families living in poverty. The foundation has committed more than $915 million (as of January 1, 2013) to global children’s issues and community initiatives to date.

About the Ed-Fi Solution

We connect the data from start to finish. The Ed-Fi solution exists to make a difference for millions of kids…one teacher, one class, one child at a time by transforming data into insights that make it easier for teachers to teach, for students to learn and for schools to succeed. The Ed-Fi solution is an educational data standard and tool suite (unifying data model, data exchange framework, application framework, and sample dashboard source code) that enables vital academic information on K-12 students to be consolidated from the different data systems of school districts while leaving the management and governance of data within those districts and states. Ed-Fi components act as a universal translator of academic data, integrating and organizing information so that educators can start addressing the individual needs of each student from day one, and can measure progress and refine action plans throughout the school year.

Developed by Double Line Partners through funding from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, the Ed-Fi solution can be licensed from the Ed-Fi Alliance free of charge by districts, state education agencies and vendors. Licensees gain unrestricted access to all Ed-Fi components and maintain ownership of derivative works. For more information, visit /.

About the Ed-Fi Alliance

The Ed-Fi Alliance, LLC, was founded in 2012 as an organization dedicated to empowering educators with real-time, actionable education data on every student in their classroom, school, district or state. The organization provides and continually innovates on the Ed-Fi Solution — available for free under license – which integrates and organizes raw education data and information from a broad range of existing data sources so it can be sifted, analyzed and put to use every day. Originally developed by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, the Ed-Fi solution can be implemented in any school, school district or state education agency today. The Ed-Fi Alliance is headquartered in Austin, TX.